May 2008

I take pride in small accomplishments. For example, I have always been proud that I could take any medicine, no matter how awful, without complaining. This is an extension of my greater power of liking, or at least tolerating, almost any food taste. It’s a gift. Recently, I met my match.

The other day, I felt a possible cold coming on, and started looking through the drawer where we keep all our meds, to see if we had one of those cold preventive pills, with the zinc in them. I recalled reading that they work. And placebo or not, they seemed to work for me in the past.

I found in the drawer a type of medicine my wife had purchased that I hadn’t seen before. It was a chewable pill, about the size of a very thick quarter. It would take some time to work through it, but it was no obstacle to the man who could take any medicine. I popped it in my mouth and started working.

At first it was pleasant, citrus-like. But the flavor just kept coming. It went from mild to strong in about ten seconds. By half a minute, it was so intense my eyes were watering, and I had only chewed about 10% of this pill. I started to worry.

A minute into it, it was so intense I thought I was going to puke, literally. I ran to the kitchen sink to spit it out, but gave it a few more seconds to see if I could get through it. No medicine had beaten me yet, and I wasn’t going to go down easy. The waves of nausea blew over me, and I knew one of them was going to put me over the edge. It was time to bail. I spit the rest of the pill into the sink, defeated.

Later, I blamed it on having just brushed my teeth. You know how sometimes particular foods are awful if you just brushed? I figured that was the problem. So the next day, determined, I took another run at it. This time I made sure I hadn’t brushed in the past hour. It started out better, I thought, but it ended with me slumped over the bathroom sink, eyes watering, trying to suppress the retching. I gazed at the half eaten pill dissolving in the drain, beaten. It was a lonely feeling.

I mentioned this defeat to my wife, Shelly. She informed me that the pills aren’t actually pills at all. They are designed to be dissolved in a tall glass of water, like Alka Seltzer.

I worry that this event undercut the aura of infallibility I have been cultivating in my marriage.

I wonder if there is such a thing as natural allies, in terms of countries.

I remember when the Soviet Union was whole, and the cold war was going strong, I predicted that someday the United States and Russia would be allies. We’re not exactly there, but we’re closing the gap.

I based that prediction on the fact that some countries are natural allies, and eventually they realize it. For example, when two superpowers don’t share a border, and aren’t fighting for the same natural resources, and would benefit from trade, and have an interest in maintaining the world order, they are natural allies.

This theory is half-baked, I admit. I don’t have the historical knowledge to fill it out. Maybe you can help.

The idea is to come up with a set of criteria that reliably predicts whether two countries are natural allies. Once identified, those countries’ leaders have an argument for their own citizens as to why they should cease acting like enemies toward the other. This is important because two countries that have been at each other for decades will require their leaders to talk the citizens out of their animosity. The leaders will need something that looks like a grand philosophical reason. That’s what the theory of natural allies is.

The criteria for two countries being natural allies might look like this:

1. Do not share a border.2. Are not trying to control the same limited natural resources.3. Have significant trade potential.4. Neither has a political philosophy that promotes conquest.5. Both have an interest in a stable world order.

The beauty of this list is in what you choose to leave off. For example, it ignores religious differences, disputes with third party allies, nuclear ambitions, arming terrorists, and lots of things you would think should be addressed. NOT addressing them is the point. Let me explain.

Take Iran and the United States, for example. I would argue that the two countries meet the criteria for being natural allies. Despite all the bad history and differences, both countries have more to gain from cooperation than dispute. The problem is that a leader in either country could not remain in power if he or she promoted suddenly being nice to the other. The citizens wouldn’t allow it.

That’s where the theory of natural allies comes in. It’s a side door. You could hold a conference to address the theory of natural allies, as opposed to a conference to address the problems between two countries. Once both countries agree they are natural allies, which is an easier sell to their citizens than “let’s be friends,” the path is set to work toward more mutual interest.

Arguably, it’s nothing but a label. But we know that people’s brains are hugely influenced by labels. If your labels are The Great Satan and Axis of Evil, there isn’t much room for agreement. But if you agree that you are natural allies, based on the five criteria that are fairly objective in nature, you can get past the label problem.

I thought I’d try creating world peace one more time before the end of this year.

The other day I cleaned off the top of my desk. This involved sorting the rubble into mounds that had something in common, and then dealing with each mound. There were bills to pay, records to update, forms to be completed, faxes to be sent, licenses to approve, documents to file, tax issues to unscramble, and on and on.

When I was done, my desk was breathtakingly clear of debris. Gazing at my uncharacteristically pristine work space, a peculiar joy came over me. As I walked from my office back to my home, I felt lighter. There was a bounce to my step. I’m reasonably sure my body was creating extra endorphins.

It made me wonder if other people get an actual physical pleasure from doing work, at least the kind where you accomplish something, no matter how unimportant. My guess is that people who work long hours get a sort of charge every time they complete a discrete task. People who don’t get that charge, on average, probably find jobs where they can work fewer hours.

I recall my corporate days, where I would spend eight hours refining a Powerpoint presentation that, in all likelihood, would have no impact on the business. I always felt a charge of pleasure when it was done. Each time I reviewed the beauty and majesty of my graphs and bullet points, I would get a new little surge.

I think the pleasure of completed work is what makes blogging so popular. You have to believe most bloggers have few if any actual readers. The writers are in it for other reasons. Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.

Do you get pleasure from completing relatively unimportant tasks? And if so, do you work more than 40 hours per week, including optional work such as blogging?

Last week, my in-laws were in town. While they were out visiting some other relatives, I took my turn watching their dog, Mollie. At this point, I should pause and mention that I haven’t had a dog since I was a kid. And in those days, in the country, when the dog felt nature’s call, we’d simply let the dog out, and it would use any part of our 2.5 acres as its toilet. Later, if you wanted to throw a ball around, you just kicked the (usually) frozen logettes to the side to clear a path. In those simple times, you weren’t playing a sport unless someone ended up covered in dog feces. It was just part of the game.

These days, things are quite different. Today, if you go to school covered in dog feces, there’s a stigma. And of course there’s the leash law. But nothing takes the joy out of a walk in the fresh air quite like being required to carry a plastic purse full of dog poop.

Back to my story, I took Mollie for a walk, thinking I understood how this process worked. The leash was no mystery. It had a cool spring action with a pistol grip. I liked that part. And I grabbed an official poop bag on the way out of the house. I was ready for anything.

Within a minute, Mollie laid down a steamer. I think she had been eating the cat food, because it wasn’t the firm little log I was expecting. But I soldiered on, turning the bag inside out like a glove, and grabbing the warm pile that melted in my hand. It wasn’t pleasant in the usual sense of the word, but I experienced some satisfaction in a job well done. I tied the bag into a tidy little package and intended to head home.

That’s when I noticed Mollie had just begun to poop. I don’t know if she was trying to spell “HELP” in case a rescue plane flew over, or what, but by now she was in full production. Step, squat, step, squat. I looked at my tidy little bag, now sealed, and realized I was screwed. I knew the neighbors would be looking, or feared they might. I couldn’t leave this Katrina-sized disaster and get another bag lest someone think, incorrectly, that I had abandoned my doody. So I decided to see if I could untie the pooper bag and have another go at the new deposits. This plan did not work as smoothly as I had hoped.

Do you know what is NOT effective for picking up warm piles of poop? If you guessed “other warm piles of poop,” you might have been in this situation yourself. It was like trying to pick up mashed potatoes with a catcher’s mitt. And I was hurrying, so needless to say, back at the house I needed the Karen Silkwood treatment to feel clean again.

Later, when my in-laws returned, I told the story. Larry, a laid-back gentleman from Arkansas, turned to his wife Cheryl and drawled “Mollie double-bagged him.” Let me tell you, the only thing that could have made my experience worse was finding out my in-laws have a name for it.

When I was researching green technology, I was disappointed to find out that no amount of solar panels can get you off the power grid. You also need a way to store the power for night use, and that technology is not yet economical or convenient.

There’s something cool about the thought of being totally off the power grid. It’s a psychological thing. I could rationalize being off the grid by saying it would come in handy if the rest of the world runs out of energy. But realistically, the big worry in that case wouldn’t be powering my iPod so much as not getting eaten by cannibals.

This week I saw some stories that reactivate my fantasy of being off the power grid for no practical reason whatsoever. First, you will soon be able to have your own nuclear reactor for your house.

I don’t know about you, but I would look for ways to weaponize it. I’m sure they’ll say that isn’t possible, but I’d still try. I want nuclear superiority in my neighborhood.

There was also a recent breakthrough in battery technology. It will take a few years, but it looks as if you will be able to economically store your solar power after all, both for your home and your future electric car.

I think these three technologies, if they all proved real, would provide the tipping point. Every new home would be energy self-sufficient, and all cars would be electric because you could charge them for free at home. Nothing new needs to be invented to make this happen.

Now please enjoy the brief period of optimism before you learn some reason this won’t all happen.

Over the years, a number of people have approached me in public, or e-mailed me, to say they also got fired for posting Dilbert comics on walls. I don’t know how many of those stories, if any, are true.

If you intend to mock your boss with Dilbert comics, the trick is in knowing which comics to pick. Apparently there is a fine line between posting a comic that criticizes a particular policy decision, versus a comic that calls your boss an inebriated prosimian. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

In order to get his unemployment benefits, the perpetrator had to convince a judge that he was merely stupid, not intentionally misbehaving. He succeeded, but it’s not the sort of victory he should feel good about, as in “Yay! The judge agrees I’m an idiot! It’s going to be in the newspaper and all over the Internet!”

The moral of this story is that if you plan to circulate a Dilbert comic calling your boss a drunken lemur, the best way is to use your boss’s unattended computer to e-mail it to the entire company.

If all they had done was tunnel to freedom, I would have been impressed with their work ethic and creativity. But these guys took it one step further and left a note thanking a guard for helping them escape.

Pure evil genius.

I think everyone including the warden realizes it is highly unlikely the guard actually helped in the escape. But the authorities still have to look into it. At the very least, it made that guard consider that he might end up on the other side of the bars.

I know it is wrong to admire the creativity of criminals. But I blame them for doing such an admirable job of being evil.

Recently I wrote a series for Dilbert where Asok the intern dies, and is cloned back to life. But his DNA gets mixed up with a Snickers candy bar and he becomes half human, half snack. In the third panel of that comic, Asok awakes and asks, “Why do I feel nuts?”

I drew his arm in a way that would, I hoped, leave some humorous ambiguity about what type of nuts he was feeling. I expected that the comic would be banned in newspapers, and make an interesting anecdote for this blog. But apparently no one noticed the third possible interpretation of why a fellow with his hands under the sheets would feel nuts. I suppose it’s just as well.

You can’t get away with a double entendre in the comic pages, but apparently a triple entendre is safe.

The December 17th issue of Time had some interesting statistics on voters. When asked the “most important quality” for a candidate, Democrats picked “good judgment” 33% of the time, and Republicans picked it 21%. The other choices were caring about people, leadership, character, and experience.

Does it bother you that good judgment wasn’t the top choice for three-quarters of all voters?

Obviously experience doesn’t help if you have bad judgment. But a person with good judgment would consult with people who have experience. Clearly, judgment is more important than experience.

Character is important in exactly the same sense that good health is important. You need a minimum of both to be a suitable president. But the bar isn’t set that high for either health or character. You can have polio, or be a liar, or a philanderer, and it doesn’t seem to have much impact on job performance. All of the current candidates have enough character, and enough health, for the job.

Leadership and caring about people are touchy-feely concepts that have little correlation with presidential job performance. Obviously you don’t want a wimp or a sociopath in the office, but again, the bar is set low. All of the current candidates clear it with room to spare.

Clearly, good judgment should be the most important quality in a president. But how often do you hear someone say that a candidate “has good judgment”? How about never?

I was thinking about this because someone forwarded me a link to a web site that is trying to draft Michael Bloomberg for president. http://www.uniteformike.com/. You would think the strongest quality a successful business person has to offer is good judgment. In most cases, if you start with a little money, and end up with a lot, you have to make a lot of good decisions along the way. But the site promoting Bloomberg doesn’t mention his decision-making skills because everyone knows voters aren’t influenced by that sort of thing.

It will come as no surprise to my regular readers that I sometimes exhibit inappropriate responses in social situations. For example, when I hear about a tragedy, and there is something remotely funny about the event, that’s the part that gets my attention. If a guy dressed in a bunny outfit kills a forest ranger, I can’t focus on the tragedy part. In that sort of situation, I would probably let out an involuntary snort before noticing no one else is laughing. I’d try to play it off as a cough, but no one would buy it.

My biggest social problem, by far, is a habit of revealing my opinion with my first reaction, before I realize I should be keeping that opinion to myself. Some husbands, when asked a question by their wives, use the time-honored “What do YOU think, dear?” But wives don’t like that approach. It seems condescending. Worse yet, it does not leave you vulnerable to having the wrong opinion, so it has a killjoy element.

Last night, by accident, I discovered The Ultimate Response to topics in which you don’t yet know the right response. It happened when I was simultaneously brushing my teeth, and yawning, and responding to my wife. It came out something like this: “Ooo-aah-mumble-agh.”

My wife stopped, and looked at me, and said, “What does that reaction mean?”

Bingo. I had accidentally discovered a response that has neither a positive nor a negative connotation. For the rest of the evening, I used it for all of my responses, to great effect.

Shelly: “Do you want to watch 30 Rock?”

Me: “Ooo-aah-mumble-agh.”

Shelly: “I’d like to watch it.”

Me: “Hey, me too!”

Feel free to try my new noise at home, or in the office. You might have to practice until it has no trace of negative or positive vibe. Be careful not to go up in pitch toward the end, because that can be construed as optimism.